The best Sunday ever!

I've been stressed out lately. I got really behind on sleep last week and felt like I could pass out at any moment all day at work on Friday (which was, you know, fun times...). The impending Dublin Irish Festival has been looming over me for the last few weeks (it's this weekend and consists of two public dance performances...my FIRST very PUBLIC dance performances...as well as my first shot at a dance competition). I'm back on the dreaded doctor-monitored liquid diet to get down to my GOAL WEIGHT (if I could make that in shiny gold letters, I totally would). I've been writing, but even the new novel can't always distract me from that knot in my stomach that always comes on when I think of either the Festival or my diet. Fun times.

So I feel like I deserved some serious escape time on Sunday.

Back story: Starting at my lunch break on Friday and through Saturday night, I read The Hunger Games. I'm behind the curve, apparently, because it took me this long to get around to it. I couldn't put it down. When I finished it late on Saturday night, I immediately was like "OMG I need to get Catching Fire NOW!" But...you know...it was midnight on Saturday night and most bookstores are kind of closed around that time. Bummer.

This is how I ended up with my escape on Sunday. Around noon I threw a load of laundry in the washer and dashed over to Borders. Milled around for a bit, because that's what I always have to do when I go in a bookstore. It doesn't take much for me to get distracted in the presence of so many books, so...bookstores...libraries...I can go in one of those and not leave for HOURS if I really wanted. But I was on a mission, so half an hour later I had Catching Fire in my hands.

As soon as I got home, I switched out the laundry, drank one of my diet shakes, and read the first few pages of the book. Love. For the next...oh...ten hours...I only emerged from my room to a) do laundry, b) get another shake, c) get some water, d) spontaneously check Facebook/email because god forbid I miss something important. For the most part, Catching Fire went with me on all of these adventures around the house. I finished the book late Sunday night. I forgot to vacuum. The parents displayed disappointment in my forgetfulness. I returned to my book (don't worry...I vacuumed this afternoon instead. We're good now).

Here's a little history lesson for you. The last time I finished a book that fast...that would be the first time I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and even that took me a good twenty-four hours (to be fair, though, Deathly Hallows is about five times longer than Catching Fire). It takes a special book for me to devote a whole day to it and finish it the same day I start it. Maybe it also takes me being a little overwhelmed with life to pull that off. Maybe it's a combination of both. Who knows? All I know is that Catching Fire was amazing. I need to read it again. I can't WAIT for the third book in that trilogy to come out later this month. I'm obsessed.

This week, I will be buying another book I'm very excited for--Guardian of the Gate by Michelle Zink...the second book of the Prophecy of the Sisters trilogy. That's another book I'll probably devour quickly. It's good that I have a ridiculous stack of to-be-read books in my room, thanks to a recent shopping spree at Half Priced Books, otherwise I don't know what I'd do after I finish all this amazingness.